Methods and systems for operating devices by means of gestures are available in different variants and fields of application. Early implementations of such systems simply relied on the detection of motion by a motion sensor to operate devices. However, the technology has evolved and currently allows to detect specific motion patterns, to enable a user to target operation of a device by specific gestures or to make operation of the device less sensible to just any kind of motion in front of the sensor.
To enable such functionality, image analysis algorithms may be applied to perform gesture recognition. Such image pattern recognition methods aim to become more and more accurate and reliable to increase the functionality. With this, gesture recognition not only becomes more accurate. It also becomes more complex, requires more arithmetic capability of the control system, the system thereby consuming more energy in idle state, or alternatively requiring a trade-off with respect to functionality.
At the same time, more and more systems become available that demand or require different manners of control than conventional switches. In modern households, various devices become controllable through the use of smart phones. However, since a smart phone may not always be at hand, also the use of gesture based control has made an entrance in this field. For example, such devices may include gesture controllable lights, televisions, computers or the like. With the increasing number of devices that may rely on gesture based control, the abovementioned increase of complexity of gesture based control systems and methods becomes a fact.
As an example of a sophisticated gesture recognition system, U.S. patent application No. US 2011/0193939 relates to a motion capture system having a depth camera, wherein a physical interaction zone of a user is defined based on a size of the user and other factors. The interaction zone can be anchored to the user and may be suitably shaped having its own coordinate system to allow mapping of a motion into a corresponding action. The system tracks the movement of the user's hand (or other body part) translating it to a corresponding action on the display.
US applications numbers US 2011/296353, US2009/027337 and US2013/009861 relate to other control systems applying gesture based user input.